WHEN the Octagon Theatre opened in the town centre 50 years ago it was truly a theatre of the people.

As the first theatre to be built in the North West since the Second World War, it not only received amazing support from Bolton Council but from the people of Bolton who helped raise the £95,000 it cost to build it brick by brick – at 12 and a half-pence a time!

The whole idea of a Bolton theatre for local people came about more or less by chance. Robin Pemberton-Billing was a lecturer at Loughborough Teacher Training College who had a chequered background.

He ran away to join the Royal Navy at 17 and, after service, had failed to settle. He went to Loughborough College to learn to teach theatre and pottery, excelling at drama, and he became involved in the setting up of a children’s theatre in Lincolnshire.

He also collaborated on a book about teaching drama but later returned to Loughborough as a drama tutor where he expounded his theories about how a theatre could be made to work in three ways: with a thrust stage, a proscenium or in the round.

He so enthused a group of his students that they determined to put his ideas on flexible theatre forms into practice. One of them, Robin Howarth, was from Bolton and he remembered a derelict theatre in his home town which might be converted.

Philip Butterworth, another of the students, recalled: “He (Pemberton-Billing) thought he was going to be our advisor. He didn’t realise until too late that we intended him to be the director.”

Pemberton-Billing and his students eventually found the derelict theatre, the Hippodrome, beyond their capabilities to adapt. Instead, he suggested the possibility of a new-build theatre and took this plan to the local authority.

They were enthusiastic so Pemberton-Billing persuaded his wife, Maggie, to come with their four sons to live in Bolton, which she did. Very quickly – and in spite of some criticism of the plan – the people of Bolton got behind the ambitious scheme. Bolton Council donated a plot of land and the town’s director of architecture, Geoffrey H Brooks, designed the building to Pemberton-Billing’s specifications.

It took 18 months to build and was opened on November 27, 1967, by Princess Margaret. A special loo was created for her benefit, complete with gold fittings. Afterwards, it was stripped out to become Pemberton-Billing’s office as the Octagon’s first artistic director.

Strangely, the main auditorium was not octagonal but hexagonal. As a Reading theatre had already claimed this name, the Bolton theatre became the Octagon instead. However, when the seating is in the round it is an octagon.

Local playwright Bill Naughton’s new play Annie and Fanny was the opening production. This not only set an ongoing practice of using Northern talent but enhanced Naughton’s career at this point, making him effectively house playwright with many of his plays appearing there first.

Robin Pemberton-Billing left the Octagon in 1972 to develop a theatre project in America. It was not successful and he returned to Bolton to set up a craft shop with his wife, also creating furniture. He died in 2012 at the age of 83, survived by Maggie and their sons, leaving an unquenchable legacy for theatre in his adopted town.

Under his directorship, a host of famous names had appeared at the theatre including Robert Powell, Alison Steadman, Matthew Kelly and Mike Harding.

His physical legacy was a unique building with the main auditorium a flexible theatre space with seating for between 300 and 390. It allowed the set to change, production by production, and seating to change as well. In 1987, the building was extended to add a studio theatre which was enlarged in 1994 and re-named The Bill Naughton Theatre in honour of the influential playwright. This studio theatre has a capacity of 100 and provides a venue for new and adventurous theatre, educational and youth performances.

In 1998, the Octagon was refurbished using an Arts Council Lottery award which improved the theatre’s seating systems and disability access and allowed the construction of a new room for business hospitality and a more spacious bar. The Octagon’s history has not been all plain sailing, though. In 1999, a financial crisis threatened to force the theatre to stop producing its own plays and become just a receiving house for touring shows.

Local people again stepped in, launching a support campaign. Under the slogan “Keep theatre made in Bolton”. it collected 12,000 signatures and organised several support events including a protest march through the town centre and two benefit concerts.

Financial commitments from funders and business sponsors eventually gave the Octagon a firmer future. Since then, it has produced between eight and nine professional theatre productions a year in the main auditorium of every type from classic drama to contemporary plays and from comedies to musicals.

And in 2017, the Octagon is now on the brink of a £9.8m building development which will take it into the future – hopefully, for at least another 50 years.